


The Space Between the Notes

by CosmicZombie



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: 1970s era, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Sascha plays violin, Slow Burn, Stef plays cello, and even more sexual tension, there's lots of rivalry, they're all students at Oxford Univeristy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:55:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23176549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmicZombie/pseuds/CosmicZombie
Summary: Sascha is 22 years old before he understands what "home" feels like.
Relationships: Stefanos Tsitsipas/Alexander Zverev
Comments: 20
Kudos: 35





	The Space Between the Notes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Claude Debussy - "Music is the space between the notes." 
> 
> Special thanks to the gc: Liam, Kalin, Abbie, Mina and Bridie - your constant support and enthusiasm means more to me than I'll ever be able to adequately articulate, and I'm so grateful to have you all in my life. This would never have been written without the amazing enthusiasm and input from all of you <3 Special thanks to Liam for helping me figure out what 70s music each of the boys would have loved the most, pontificating about the characters and emotional depths of tennis players with me, and for cheering me up whenever I'm sad. 
> 
> I've had lots of fun writing this au, so I really hope you enjoy reading it! Feedback would seriously make me happier than I can express <3 There should be about 8 parts to this, I'll post them as often as I can!

November in Oxford is bleak. The vivid autumnal colours turn downtrodden and muddy, nights fall so close together it feels starts to feel as though it’s never properly light, and Sascha’s high-ceilinged room stays cold no matter how high he cranks the notch on the radiator. He doesn’t know why he minds it so much. Winters in Berlin had been much colder and darker. But they’d also been wide-skied and beautiful, glittering with opalescent frosts and pearly northern stars. Here, the cold is just grey. It’s damp and cloying, seeping right through him even when he’s wearing his thickest Arran jumper and two pairs of the home-knitted socks his mother keeps sending him. It’s numbing. Most nights he just stares into space, listening to the clatter of other people’s noise on the stairwell. November in Oxford gets into his bones, weighs him down so that moving feels impossible.

Tonight is worse than usual. He’s been hunched over his desk, knees pulled up to his chest for warmth, since he got in from his Microeconomics seminar several hours ago, and the books in front of him are still shut. The light has started to dwindle, casting his room into a semi-darkness that’s barely percolated by the feeble, circular glow of his desk-lamp.

Outside, down in the quad, he can see students hurrying through the gloomy dusk, porous breath clouding around them in the drizzle. The greasy glow of the lamps casts their faces into pale grimaces, all identical. Only one of them seems to be lingering; Sascha recognised Stefanos Tsitsipas sitting on the steps outside the philosophy wing, head tilted back, staring up at the sky. He’s getting soaked, golden curls plastered like strokes from a paintbrush to the elegant angles of his face, but he just keeps gazing upwards, as though he’s seeing something infinitely more awe-inspiring than grey. It must sting, the freezing rain tumbling directly into his eyes, but he doesn’t seem remotely bothered by it.

As far as Sascha has seen, there’s a lot that doesn’t seem to bother Stefanos Tsitsipas. He doesn’t really fit in with most of the Oxford crowd who wear black tie to Sunday lunches and grope girls at the Eagle & Child and don’t bother with their readings because their parents can pull strings if their marks drop. Stefanos Tsitsipas actually does his work, Sascha knows. Whenever he’s been in the library returning yet another stack of unread books, Stefanos always seems to be there with a stack of obscure looking texts tucked earnestly under one arm as he browses or pouring over medieval manuscripts from Special Collections. Instead of going out to the pub after seminars or at weekends, he goes to Women’s Rights and Anti-Apartheid protests at the union. He wears flares and turtlenecks and embroidered suede waistcoats, and has hair longer than most boys Sascha knows. It’s as gold and soft as a girl’s, only there’s nothing girly about the broad set of his shoulders or his stubble, the fierce passion Sascha has seen him exhibit on the rugby pitch. A lot of people make fun of him behind his back – but none of it seems to bother Stefanos Tsitsipas, and that bothers Sascha.

Maybe it wouldn’t, if Sascha hadn’t spent a whole two years moulding himself carefully so no one notices how much he really hates it here, how much of an outsider he still feels. To anyone who doesn’t know him – which is everyone now, Sascha supposes – he guesses it probably does look like he fits in. He goes out on Friday nights and drinks beer even though he hates the taste, wears his gown and cap to all the formals, brings girls back to his room when he’s too drunk to remember their faces. Sascha has never wanted to be different – and yet he finds himself half-envying how easily Stefanos Tsitsipas seems to be able to embrace exactly that. It makes Sascha’s entire time at Oxford feel meaningless.

Of course, maybe Stefanos Tsitsipas is more conventional than he appears. Maybe his apparent ease is as much as a front as the version of themselves everyone presents to the world, Sascha muses. Perhaps he secretly avoids phoning home and feels lonely and ignores his readings by lying in bed until the morning light has seeped away again just like Sascha. Somehow, Sascha doubts it. Because he can’t explain it, but there’s something about Stefanos Tsitsipas that unsettles him, makes him uneasy to his core – and he suspects it’s less to do with Stefanos’s flamboyant velvet flares or home-made protest patches or flowing curls, and more to do with the complete sense of ease with which he displays all these things, as though being unapologetically yourself is the easiest thing in the world. Sascha hates him for having that luxury, for not caring what other people think when he cares so much. He hates himself for caring.

Maybe none of this stuff would bother him, if he was like Stefanos. Maybe he would attend all his lectures and feel inspired by them, do unique and unusual things just because they interested him. But he’s not Stefanos, he’s himself, and his problems often feel more inescapable than the cold. Some mornings they’re so heavy it feels impossible to lift himself out of bed, and even when he does moving feels impossible so he just spends hours sitting staring into nothingness. Most of the time he feels too weighed down to eat. He just smokes lot instead, mainly for something to do because he spends a lot of his time in group settings where he doesn’t really know what to say. He can’t quote Keats or debate the intricacies of Russian politics, and he doesn’t particularly want to either, but he feels uncomfortable and out of his depth that he can’t. At least with a cigarette in hand his silence looks purposeful.

Resigning himself to the fact he’s not going to get any work done tonight, Sascha sighs and stands up to draw the curtains, shutting out the lone figure of Stefanos Tsitsipas who stands out in the gloom of the quad as unsettlingly as the full moon in a midday sky.

The curtains make a horrible scraping noise as Sascha drags them shut. They’re a deep wine red, about as hideous as the rest of his room. Sascha’s lived in it for two years now, but it’s never really felt like home. It feels too big for him with its draughty eaves and high-ceiling, and despite the north-facing window it’s always seemed dark, like all the light is absorbed by the old-fashioned bookcase full of stories Sascha has never read and are steeped in a history he doesn’t feel part of. His gown hangs on the back of the door, gathering dust.

There are only a few glimmers of things that remind him the room belongs to him: his record player and stack of records on the windowsill (Bach and Beethoven, Debussy, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin hiding a couple of Blondie ones); his worn violin case propped against the bookcase and sheet music scattered across the floor; a few blurry polaroids pinned to his corkboard. There are three: one of his mother standing on a beach at Monaco two summers ago, laughing as she tries to keep hold of her hat, and one of Lovik as a puppy. The third is of him and Mischa when he was about ten. Its summer and he’s hanging off Mischa’s shoulders with a smile as wide as the sun, all long gangling limbs and platinum blonde hair. Sascha sometimes looks at it and tries to remember what it feels like to smile like that, how full of warmth he felt. They should be comforting, but sometimes he wants to take them all down. More often than not now they don’t make him feel more at home; all they do is remind him he’s not there.

It probably feels most like home when Dominic is there, socked feet propped against the radiator and a steaming mug of tea cupped in his hands as he tells Sascha all about rainforests or ocean currents or whatever it is he’s been learning about that week. These days, though, even he feels somehow unfamiliar. Dominic lives and breathes his degree: he always carries around a little stack of extra readings from his lecturer and is late to everything because he’s so caught up and happy in what he’s doing.

Dominic the same person Sascha’s known since they were five years old and racing each other down frosty Berlin streets, but Sascha isn’t sure he is anymore. Increasingly, he feels as though he somehow lost himself somewhere along the way – but he can never seem to pinpoint where. Sometimes, he worries that Dominic is sick of him because they spend less time together than they used to and Sascha knows he’s not the easiest person to care about. He’s pessimistic and resentful and dismissive, and he worries that maybe all he has in common with Dominic now is a history Sascha feels increasingly belongs to someone else.

Sometimes, when Sascha’s feeling particularly cynical, he isn’t sure whether he misses Dominic or if he just envies him.

Dominic has more friends than Sascha has had collectively in his whole life, and they keep him so busy that often the only time Sascha sees him these days is at orchestra. Even then, Dominic doesn’t always make it anymore. It’s only there that it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters there. Ever since Sascha auditioned, exhausted and lost and on the brink of dropping out two years ago, the orchestra has been his salvation, his home away from home. He tries not to think about how, in lots of ways, it’s more like a home than the one he left to come here. It’s held every Thursday evening in St. Mary’s which is freezing, but still somehow feels cosy with its ornate stained-glass windows, the warm smell of violin resin and slowly-burning candles.

For two hours there every week, Sascha gets to forget everything else and do what he feels he was always meant to, what he would be doing, if it had all been up to him.

-

Thursday night is colder than usual. A grim, gritty frost hardens the grey grass as Sascha crunches across it from his History of Economics seminar, ignoring the empty grumble of his stomach and the way the bitter dusk stings his cheeks. Through the low-hanging mist, St. Mary’s is lit up, exuding a warm golden glow that spills into the colourless chill like sunlight. Sascha feels relief flood his tired body just at the sight of it and quickens his pace, pushing open the heavy oak doors and inhaling the familiar smell of fading incense and wood-polish. The gentle burble of chatter and instruments tuning up washes over him as he scans the space – but Dominic’s spot behind his in the strings section is empty, even though it’s already two minutes to seven.

He’s making his way to his spot for first violin when he suddenly realises the seat beside him is occupied for the first time since Maya graduated. To his astonishment, he realises that it’s none other than Stefanos Tsitsipas, cradling the most beautiful cello Sascha’s ever seen. He’s wearing a fitted forest-green polo neck that shows the long lean planes of his back, the graceful arch of his arms around the cello. In the muted light of the church, his hair looks more gold than ever, dishevelled like he maybe got caught in the drizzle and pulled into an ineffective bun where more hair seems to escape it than be caught by it. There’s a pencil stuck behind his left ear and his expression is intent, focused, as though he’s completely alone in the chapel with his cello.

All the relief Sascha had felt moments before hardens like a stone as he makes his way towards his seat, suddenly feeling like a stranger in the only place that’s felt like home for years. For some inexplicable reason, his heart is thumping as he sits down beside Stefanos and he immediately occupies himself with adjusting his tuning so he doesn’t have to look up. After a few moments, however, he gives in to the urge to glance surreptitiously sideways. Stefanos appears still utterly absorbed in the sheet music in front of him, a faint line between his eyebrows like he’s concentrating hard. He is either unwilling or unable to acknowledge that at least half the orchestra– including Sascha – is staring openly at him. Instead, he plucks at the strings in gentle pizzicato, eyes fluttering shut for a moment in a kind of serenity that Sascha has never contemplated.

It’s two minutes to seven when Dominic finally arrives, navy bomber jacket dotted with rain and a stack of music clasped haphazardly under one arm. He waves cheerfully at Sascha, and then – to Sascha’s astonishment – also to Stefanos Tsitsipas.

“Stefanos, you made it,” he smiles, breathless, flopping down onto the seat just behind Sascha and hastily getting out his viola. The case is old and battered, the same one he’s had since he and Sascha were at school and were shepherded off to the local orchestra every Tuesday lunchtime. Sascha remembers how Dominic used to keep his packed lunch in the little inside pocket with his resin, usually granary bread sandwiches and home-baking from his Mum. They’d share rock buns or apple cinnamon cake sitting together at the back of the hall, leaving crumbs all over their music books. Even now when Dominic opens it, Sascha imagines he can smell home-baked bread. “Have you met Sascha?” Dominic continues eagerly, glancing sideways and frowning slightly when he catches Sascha’s expression. “Sascha, this is Stefanos. We’re on the same staircase this year.”

“Ste _fan_ os?” Sascha repeats loudly over the noise, just for something to say, because he’s inexplicably irked by the fact Stefanos still hasn’t looked at him. He’s used to people not seeing him, so he’s not sure why it suddenly bugs him so much.

“Stefanos,” Stefanos corrects him without looking up, and before Sascha can say something to get his attention the conductor is clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention.

They’re rehearsing Mozart this week, and even though Sascha’s known this movement off by heart for years, he’s still practiced all week because it was easier than writing an essay he knows he’ll fail. Mozart makes him ache for home, slow Sunday mornings racing Mischa in the garden with the sound of his mother playing piano sonatas drifting out into the easy sunlight. His Mum always said he’d got his passion for music from her. It was her violin she’d given him to play when he was seven years old, and he’d fallen in love with it from the moment he picked it up. He’s never done things by halves, and his love for the instrument, the music he can create and exist in with it, has only deepened with age into something that feels more like a necessity than a hobby. He can’t imagine functioning without it. These days, it feels as vital as breathing.

He knows the movement so well that it’s easy to close his eyes and lose himself to it completely, letting the rest of the orchestra fade into a background lull. He forgets about how lost he’d felt in his seminar fifteen minutes ago, about Dominic and his viola case, about everything. Gradually, the stress that’s built up over the last week fades and his heart slows.

When they pause for a break between movements, Stefanos leans towards him, and Sascha catches a faint whiff of cloves and bow resin, the warmth of skin. “Do you mind?” Stefanos speaks in a low murmur, an accent Sascha can’t quite place. He can feel the faint brush of Stefanos’s breath and his skin prickles at the audacity of it. “You’re a little out of tune.”

Sascha feels his cheeks flare with heat. “I think I know when I’m out of tune,” he hisses.

“It’s just your E string,” Stefanos continues, as though Sascha hasn’t even spoken. Up close, Sascha can see the hint of golden stubble on his angular jaw, and there’s something disarmingly _male_ about it: it doesn’t fit with his soft curls or long dark lashes or the quiet grace of his posture. Sascha can’t work out why the fact he can’t reconcile the two is troubling. “Only a fraction,” Stefanos adds, lightly, as though this absolves his interference.

“I’m sorry, do you play the violin?” Sascha demands hotly, only just managing to keep his voice to low tones. He wants to look away but he finds he can’t quite bring himself to. His heart is thrumming with barely suppressed anger, and there’s something almost addictive about the unfamiliarity of it.

“I do, actually,” Stefanos doesn’t have the grace to look modest. “Which is why I know you’re fractionally out of tune. It’s an easy mistake to make, if you’re not that experienced with playing this particular type of movement. It’s okay.”

“Not that experienced?” Sascha repeats incredulously, and he knows he must have raised his voice this time because behind them, Dominic clears his throat meaningfully, and he realises the rest of the strings section are staring at them. Through gritted teeth, Sascha mumbles out an apology before turning back to Stefanos. His eyes are surprisingly dark, up close. “I’ve been playing this instrument since I was five years old. I know it better than the back of my hand.”

“If you’ve been playing that long, you really should know your tuning better by now. It’s a shame, you’re not bad otherwise,” Stefanos remarks lightly, and Sascha wonders if Stefanos is doing it deliberately, trying to needle some kind of reaction out of him. “I don’t like to tell people how to play their instruments –” Sascha snorts derisively and Stefanos looks irritated “– I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all, only it’s throwing off my sense of the piece.” 

“I am not out of tune,” Sascha repeats, angrily and through gritted teeth. “Maybe you’re just not used to playing in an orchestra,” he adds, acridly. “It’s quite a different discipline to messing around on your own, but I guess you wouldn’t really know.”

“Or maybe you’re just not used to not being the best one here,” Stefanos retaliates, his tone flippant as he flicks through his music, not bothering to meet Sascha’s heated gaze. That, as much as anything, makes Sascha’s annoyance ignite into full-blown anger.

“If you think music is about being the best player then you probably shouldn’t be here,” Sascha hisses, and he can feel himself shaking with how _furious_ he suddenly is. He hasn’t felt anger like this since he was still living at home, and it’s startling, the sudden surge of it, the heat. It floods him as compellingly as the music had moments before. “That’s not what it’s about, that’s never what it’s been about. Music’s the only thing in this place where that doesn’t matter.”

Stefanos looks at him properly then for the first time, and all the anger fades from Sascha quickly as it surged up like a tidal wave. He’s thrown, hit with the fleeting impression that Stefanos is looking at him the same way he’d gazed up at the rain the night before, quiet and contemplative and utterly uninhibited, as though he’s witnessing something fascinating. His eyes aren’t quite brown; they’re a deep amber, like the final glimpse of sunlight at midsummer or the conkers Sascha used to fill his pockets with on the way home from school in Berlin. He looks at Sascha in a way that makes Sascha forget completely, for a moment, how annoyed he is by him, how his stomach aches emptily because he couldn’t bring himself to go down to dinner before orchestra, how there’s rain outside and a ten page unfinished paper awaiting him when he gets back. He forgets all of it.

Then the conductor is starting the strings section back up and the music washes over them once more. For the first time since Sascha picked up a violin, he doesn’t find himself completely captured by it.

-

After everyone else has spilled out of St Mary’s into the bitter dark, Sascha lingers, leaning moodily against the cool stone wall of the chapel and smoking as he waits for Dominic. He usually feels lighter after orchestra, less weighed down by the cold – but right now he just feels hungry and exhausted and a little bit like he did at Mischa’s wedding when everyone was dancing and he suddenly wasn’t sure where he fit anymore.

He gets almost to the end of his cigarette before Dominic finally comes out, talking and laughing with Stefanos Tsitsipas. Sascha grits his teeth, exhales smoke through his nose and glares at the cobblestones, feeling heat flood through him again. When he looks up again though, Dominic is beside him and Stefanos is wandering away in the other direction, back towards college, and something almost like disappointment quells the heat in Sascha’s chest.

“Since when does he play cello?” Sascha stares mutinously after Stefanos’s retreating back, flicks ash to the damp ground where the miniscule embers fizzle and go black. Stefanos walks unhurriedly, as though his head is somewhere else entirely. Sascha is annoyed with himself for wondering where.

“Since always, I think,” Dominic shrugs, winding his scarf round his neck. It’s rust-coloured and worn and he’s had it forever, it reminds Sascha of Christmas carolling under wintery Berlin skies.

“Then why start coming here now?” Sascha takes a long drag of his cigarette and exhales, watching it unfurl into the heavy grey dusk around them.

Dominic looks at him, pauses in the process of tucking his scarf into his bomber jacket. “I suggested it. I heard him practicing his cello and he was just so good, Sasch. You heard him – I’ve never heard anything like it. And you know the orchestra needs him now that Maya’s graduated.” He pauses, looks at Sascha, “Is there a problem?” he asks, shrewdly.

Mutinously, Sascha shakes his head and flicks ash to the ground. “He’s just a bit –” Sascha breaks off, searching for the words, “Weird,” he finishes, dismissively. 

Dominic eyes him with something horribly like pity. “He’s a really nice person, Sasch.” His voice is sad, as though he’s trying to explain something to Sascha he won’t understand. A heavy silence hangs between them for several beats that would once have been broken by easy conversation. “Are you coming to the pub for a bit? I’m meeting Diego and the environmental change society there at nine, you’re more than welcome.”

“I shouldn’t,” Sascha mutters, flicking ash to the ground. “I’ve got an essay due.” It’s true, but he has no intention of writing it when he gets back to his room.

Dominic shrugs. “Okay. Offer’s open if you change your mind.” He finishes doing up his coat and picks up his viola case where he’d propped it against the wall by Sascha’s violin case. Sascha remembers the way they’d sat together like that at school, and aches for how long ago it feels, for how far away he feels from that person. “Sasch?”

Sascha chucks his cigarette to the floor and looks up, arms folded across his chest. “Yeah?”

Dominic seems to struggle with himself for a moment. Eventually he just smiles, says, “I’ll see you Saturday,” and there’s a kind of sadness in his expression that reminds Sascha of the way his Dad looks at him. Seeing it in Dominic is much harder, and Sascha drops his gaze to the ground, nods.

When he looks up again, Dominic has disappeared into the lingering mist and Sascha hates that he feels relieved, to be alone again. He takes a deep lungful of damp night air and leans back wearily against the railings to finish his cigarette, turning his gaze skywards and unconsciously finding himself searching for whatever had captured Stefanos Tsitsipas so much the other night.

All he can see is grey.


End file.
